


Our Love is a Star

by auselysium



Series: Faded Luck [2]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Infidelity, M/M, POV First Person, affair, meet oliver's kids, meet oliver's wife Steph
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-21 08:32:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13737096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: Elio makes the move to start his new position at the same university as Oliver.  How long will it take for the immense history they have shared to impact Oliver's life?  And what parallel life will he finally choose?





	1. Lost and Alone, Standing Offers

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for Oliver/Wife intimacy.

_ Our love is a star _

_ Sure some hazardry _

_ For the light before and after most indefinitely _

Beth/Rest, Bon Iver

*

It is a dream built upon fantasy, distilled from memory.

I am young again, my muscles tight, skin absent of blemishes or obvious signs of age.  I feel  alive and beautiful in these callow bones.

The space beyond the bed is amorphous but the linens, white with delicate yellow flowers, are familiar. I’d know them by the over-washed feel alone as I clench them between my fingers, the citrus scent of Mafalda’s soap mixed with the sea.

Elio is radiant spread back against those sheets.  His curls cling to his creased brow with sweat.  His body flushed and malleable.  He’s panting, thoroughly wrecked and ravished.  My subconscious supplies me with intricate feelings of tenderness amidst the lust, leaving out the regret that so often accompanies these dreams.

There is overwhelming heat all around and within. The night air.  Elio’s skin.

His body is pliant. His sounds, the hushed, close-lipped whimpers of one not at the peak of his need but slipping down the blissful denouement.  Elio is at his most vulnerable in these moments, most open to suggestion.

“Roll over,” my dream self speaks from on high.  Elio’s eyes blink open, his hands trailing desperately over his chest as if trying to find his body through the haze.  “Roll over,” I say again.

With the ethereal grace of one completely over-fucked, he obeys.  I would swear I can feel the swell of Elio’s ass in my palms, can taste the sweat pooling on his back as I trail the length of his spine with the tip of my tongue. Can hear the shuddering, gasping breath he emits as my tongue continues lower, between crevices, tasting places that had previously only been touched with fingers and cock.  

“What are you doing?”  It’s the wonder-struck question of one who has never had this done to them before, or even considered that one could.

I lick again, soft then probing, and Elio sobs.  “You want me to stop?”

“Fuck no.”

I become aware of another body, pressed against me.  It is equally familiar.  Firmer, and yet not firm at all.  There are curves where there should be flat expanses.  Ass and waist and soft belly.  My hips stir against that real-life form regardless, the pressure against my erection a welcome outlet.  

My hands wander under warm bed-clothes, only to be pushed away.  “Oliver,” she says.

_ She _ .   _ Stephanie. _

_ “ _ Stop, the boys are going to wake up any second.”  She’s smiling though.  Perhaps I can still convince her.

“I’ll be quick,” I say, grinning against her shoulder blade.  I circle my arms around her and roll my hips forward, just to show her how hard I am.  She doesn’t need to know what fantasies of past lovers have brought me to this state.  

“Oliver,” she says again, voice light but testing.  I hum back, kissing the skin at her neck and slipping my hand under the band of her pajamas.  “Don’t,” she says.

“It’s been forever, come on.”

“Stop it,” she snaps, with a quick shove to my wrist.  In an instant, I am snapped back to reality.  I extract himself from her, rolling onto my back.  She turns, hands tucked protectively against her body.  “I’m sorry, I just...maybe tonight?”

“Yeah.  Maybe.”  I run both hands through my hair.  I’ve  been Rejected by the mediocre, second best I hadn’t even really wanted in the first place.  I rip the sheets away, making no attempt to hide my hard-on that presses against the back side of my boxers.  The en suite bathroom is only a few steps away with my long-legged gait, so I am alone, door slammed shut and shower on, in mere seconds.

In my own hand, I get off quickly.  Silent and perfunctory, my mind blank of both the frigidity of my wife and the dream images that had stirred me so, neither being totally unfamiliar.  I rinse my hand of any remaining ejaculate and turn my head under the spray with a sigh.

It’s been a long summer.  With only a single summer school course to teach and the boys home all day, everyday aside from the two weeks we’d sent them to a summer camp in Maine, it’s been an overabundance of family time.  And while that concept had been wonderful at first, the patina on the brass is beginning to show.  

I am looking forward to the semester starting, falling into the busy family routine that we’ve survived on for so many years.  Any day now, the university students will start trickling back to town, Waterman Ave that cuts through campus will be thick with pedestrian traffic and the line to get a decent cup of coffee at the Union will become maddening.  

And eventually, Elio will move here.  He’ll become a neighbor, a colleague and not just some faded memory, someone meant to come into my life with brilliant bursts of intensity only to be followed by years or months of separation.

We’ve kept in touch since Elio’s surprise visit nearly 10 months before, though casually and sporadically.  Emails about the best realtors in town and what movers to use.  A quick lunch the day he had come into town to close on his new town home and a phone call the day he’d stopped through with a moving truck before leaving for B. for the summer.

I’m not sure if I had expected more.  Some sort of indication on Elio’s part that this transition from complete disconnect to proximity was going to be as life altering to him as it feels like it would be for me.  

I turn off the shower and dress in a light shirt - a linen button down, casual but still professional.  The boys are, in fact, awake by the time I come downstairs and Stephanie presents me with a coffee and a contrite kiss.  I returns the gesture, clearing the air.  It’s what a good husband does.  After all, I can’t hold a grudge on an issue that has been prevalent for years.  

Steph is working the evening shift, so I take the chance to escape the house for the morning and head to campus.

The classics department is located in an old sprawling building, taking up one side of the main quad.  It’s the epitome of academic architecture, red brick, columns, ivy, all the stereotypes.  Inside the long, narrow halls criss cross with a musty smell that is part books and part carpet that probably hasn’t been replaced since Eisenhower was president.  It is home to those traditional areas of study, the disciplines that even students of Plato’s academy would recognize still - philosophy, history, religion, literature, and the like.  

I’ve kept tabs on the English and Lit department, regularly exiting the elevator two floors too soon and strolling down the corridor with an air of disinterest even as I’d watched an office on the east side of the building first empty of its previous occupant then get a fresh coat of paint and finally a new nameplate outside of the door.  

_ Dr. Elio Perlman, Romantic Poetry, Director of Literature in Translation Program.   _ It almost hadn’t seemed real when I’d first seen it.  That name.  I’d  needed to resist the urge to run my fingers over the embossed lettering once or twice.

I’ve walked past that door so many times over the course of the summer, that I almost don’t notice that there is a light on behind the textured glass window and the sounds of Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas being played through speakers drift into the hallway.

He’s here.  I knock.

“Yep.”  The word is absent, the called out answer of someone distracted by a current task.

Elio is turned away from the door as I open it, standing on a chair to arrange some books on the very top shelf.  He’s dressed in jeans and a loose t-shirt, it’s soft fabric falling between his shoulder blades.  He is tanned, his face shaved clean, it is summer after all.

“Morning, Pro,” I say and the radiant smile he gives me as he turns matches mine.

“Oliver.”

He makes his way to me, stepping carefully off his chair and over boxes, kicking some out of the way as he does.  He hugs me, long and warm.  It’s the embrace of two people truly happy to see each other again.  I feel him tuck his face against my shoulder just for a moment before he steps away, planting his hands on his hips.

“When did you get into town?”  I ask.

“About a week ago.”  I try not to let that register on my face.  “It’s been totally mental with new faculty orientation and department meetings.  God, Dean Cartwright is a stickler for policy, isn’t he? And I only managed to get all this brought in today.”  He gestures at the mid-move chaos all around us.

“You should have let me know. I could have helped.”  

“I hired movers.” He says, too quick.

We arrive at the same realization concurrently: this is actually happening.  This isn’t going to just be a stolen evening, where we had both been drunk on too much alcohol and the unexpected rush of seeing each other again, or even the sunny memories of a once-in-a-lifetime romance that I have memorialized on my office wall only a few steps from here with a poster and a postcard, hung unabashedly in pride of place because no one else in the world but Elio would understand their meaning.  

But this is life, career, future, memory, all colliding in the sober morning light that streams through his office windows, which is the same morning light that fills mine only a few floors away and articulates the curls framing his very much matured but still somehow delicate face.

Elio rubs at his brow, catching a quick breath before speaking.  “I didn’t want to intrude on your summer or anything, so I didn't call.  I don’t want you to feel obligated to make room in your life for me.”

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe I want to make room for you?”  I step forward and Elio adjusts back.  It’s too much too soon and that’s ok.

“Have you been downtown?”  I ask, changing the subject.  “We could maybe go for lunch in a bit.  I could take you to my favorite places? Show you around?”

“I’d like that.  Thanks,”  His smile is a little, half-cocked thing and I don’t think of my dream from this morning.  At least, I try not to.

Neither of us mention it, but as we meander through the streets of our now mutual home a few hours later, it’s impossible not to see the similarities between this afternoon and our first day together back in B.  We’d shared a leisurely meal al fresco, stopped by the art museum, then for coffee.  Even the weather, late New England August, is similar enough to Italian mid-June, that all that is missing are the pine lined roads, our bikes and the crash of the sea.

I catch him looking at me as we talk, the conversation flowing easily.  In Italy, the difference in our years, while not enough to deter me forever, had been evident.  There were things I’d lived through that he simply hadn’t had the chance to yet. But now, we’ve traveled so many parallel journeys now - grad school, doctoral defense, first job interviews, the tenure process, ridiculous department heads, publishers or even just being men of a certain age, citizens of the same phase of life.  

I feel like we could talk forever and I remember how much I had simply liked Elio before I’d ever loved him.

“You still run?”  I ask.  My paper coffee cup has long since been empty but I’d continued to hold onto it as if throwing it away might be some indication that I wanted to be done with him as well.

“Obviously,” he says with mock offense as if I should just be able to tell by the great shape he’s still in.  “I ran everyday this summer.”

“Same old paths?”

“Same old paths,” he repeats.  He sounds wistful.

I suggest we meet the next morning, early, so I can show him some of my favorite running loops near campus.  He says that sounds like a great plan and we part ways with a simple, “See you then.”  

How strange that our farewell lacks any of the usual angst, the repeated regret.  


	2. Such Recovery

Both the boys are outside when I arrive home, playing a half-hearted game of basketball in the hoop over the garage.  They’d probably only started it for my benefit once they saw my car coming around the corner.

“Mom is pissed,” Adam says as I swing open the driverside door.  His voice has started to break over the summer so that makes his statement sound all the more ominous.  It’s only then that I look at my watch and realize how late in the day it has become.

Steph is out the door before I even take one step up the driveway.  Scrubs on, hair done in a tight bun on top of her head, purse over her shoulder.   

“I called your office five times.”

“You don’t start work for half an hour.  You’re not going to be late.”

She gives me a head-tilted glare, like that was some sort of excuse for my whole day absence.  “There was a problem with Mr. Hennessy earlier and they called because he would only let me treat him...”

“I told you to go,” Adam interrupts, basketball propped on his hip.  “I’m almost 14.  I can fucking look after Jake…”

“Language!”  We shout in unison.  

Our eldest son, so full of an attitude that attempts to mask his inner sensitivity is a mechanism I recognize too easily from my younger self.  They don’t tell you, when you become a parent, that it's not just your looks they will inherit.

He mutters a quiet, “Whatever,” and grabs his little brother by the sleeve, pulling him inside.

The truth is, Steph and I have gotten lazier about where and when we unleash our frustration on each other, not bothering to cover it up as well as we used to.  I know from first hand experience how much this tension affects Adam, affects both our boys really, but especially him.  I see the way he looks at me during these moments, watching closely as we fail him.

We’ve also become very adept at letting go of our anger sooner than we might like just for the sake of the situation.  Which means those little barbs grow pricklier, the root of the problem never getting resolved.  The resentment has eaten away at us, like acid on ancient paper, making us brittle and prone to tear than ever before.

“I’m sorry,” I say and Steph’s shoulders drop.  Her purse slips and she catches it by the strap.  

“Where were you?”

“Elio got into town today so I took him downtown.  We got lunch.”

“Elio?” And now her demeanor changes completely.  For whatever reason, my wife is totally enchanted by Elio, even with their limited interaction.  Perhaps she feels closer to me if she is fond of him too, like she’s being let in on a part of my past I’ve kept precious and relatively vague.  Or perhaps it’s just because he’s a charming Italian man with manners and a dashing smile who can’t help but ingratiate himself to everyone he meets.

“Is he settling in ok?”

“We’re going to go running in the morning.”

“That’s great.”   She touches my elbow, her fingers trailing down to catch my wrist. I catch her hand in mine, letting our fingers link.  I find comfort in the familiar touch and am reminded of the cheesy poem she’d wanted read at our wedding,  _ These are the hands of your best friend. _

I remember when that was true.

Her eyes linger on our joined hands.  I want to say something to soften the moment.  To try fix things, even if it is just a patch that I know won’t hold.

“I didn’t leave anything for dinner.”  She says as she turns to her car.

Her final icy salvo lands squarely in my chest.  

I go inside to find both the boys on the couch, the TV volume turned down low so they could eavesdrop, probably.  Adam looks to me and Jake look to his older brother for guidance.  

I clap my hands, impotent to it all.  “Let’s go get a pizza.”

*

It’s not easy for me to find a good running partner.  Not because I have some preternatural ability to run, but being the height I am, each easy stride for me is two or three for the average person.  Steph and I had tried it after Adam was born in one of her mad kicks to lose the baby weight but she had only gotten frustrated, saying I wouldn’t run slow enough for her.  It had probably been true.

Elio and I run first thing in the morning as the sun makes its way over the tree line.  Elio is fresh from his bed, unshowered, hair everywhere, his skin smelling of nighttime.  It feels intimate, our feet pounding the ground with a synchronized smack.  

We go for four miles, looping through campus then down past the river.   After, we walk back to the parking lot, breath coming back to us, sweat drying on our brows.

“I spoke with my mother yesterday.  She sends her love.”

“How is she?”  He reads the concerned tenor in of my voice and makes a non-committal noise.  Not great, not terrible.  

“She should come visit.”

He laughs.  “I’m not so sure how well she’d do, to be honest.  She’s been spending more and more time in B. and less in Milan or traveling.  She feels closer to dad when she’s there.  Besides, she wasn’t completely in favor of my move here.”

“Why?”

“She worries, I think.”  He looks at me, sheepish.  

“What, because of me?”

“She my mother.  She remembers what it was like after you left.”

I can tell he regrets saying that almost right away, as if he’s touched upon something we so far had agreed, through our mutual silence, to ignore.  

But I’m curious and I’m a masochist, clearly, happy to press on decades old bruises.

“What was it like?”  

“Quiet,” he says.  “Awful.”

He doesn’t need to expand.  New York, for all it’s overpopulated madness, had felt much the same.

“At least your parents had some sort of understanding of what had happened and could be there for you.  There wasn’t anyone I could talk to about you.”

We walk a few steps further in silence, exchanging quick ‘Good mornings’ with another jogger out with their dog.   

Then he says in a way that defines the word rhetorical, “Does no one know about you?”

I keep my eyes cast further down the path, but I can feel him watching me.  I simply shake my head.  “I told a few friends in college one night when I was really drunk.  They were mostly ok with it.”

“Does that include your wife?”

He doesn’t use her name.  I’m reminded of how therapists shape questions, clinical and analytic.  

“No.  She...she wouldn’t understand.  Things are black and white for her. Besides, I didn’t meet Steph until grad school and by that point there were...expectations.”    _ Why do you think I tried so futilly to resist you? _ I want to add but don’t because I assume he’s already put that together for himself.  

“Your parents expectations or your own?”

“Both?  I can only imagine how well all that would have gone over with Steph and her extremely conservative parents.   _ My  _ extremely conservative parents.” I say.  “‘By the way, mom, dad, Mr and Mrs. Weltman, before I marry your daughter you should know that I prefer sleeping with men, even having gone so far as to have deep emotional attachments to men, but let’s just go ahead and plan the reception menu, yes?  I’m thinking surf and turf.’”

Elio laughs, a sound as rosy as the the color still spread across his freckled cheeks from the exercise.  It makes me smile too.  Does he know that I planted that line about ‘deep emotional attachments’ for his sake?  Does he know that I’ve decided, in this very moment, that I don’t want our past to be something we shy away from?  

We reach our cars, parked next to each other.  Elio bends down to untie where he’d knotted his keys into his laces.  

“I think it was worst for me when the letter stopped.”  Elio regains his full height, unprepared for my statement.  He angles his head, a curious crease in his brow.

“I could tell the writing was on the wall, if you pardon the phrase.  You...stopped sharing things with me,” I explain.  “And then I’d take longer to reply.  I knew soon the day would come where one of us wrote and the other just wouldn't write back.”

It had felt like losing him all over again, only this time instead of being ripped apart by the speed of a jet plane, it was piece by piece.  Word by word.  Like choking in slow motion.  I had already been married for nearly a year.  I’d had no rights to claim him as ‘mine’ any longer.  I had to let him, and the man I’d been with him, go.

“That’s why I sent my last letter to you in Italy.”

“I always wondered why you did that.”  He uses his car key to point at me. “I assumed it was because you couldn’t be bothered to remember that I’d moved to the States.”

“No, Elio,” I shake my head, looking to the pavement to hide my demure smile.  I'd been too keenly aware of his proximity during those days.  “I figured the longer it took for the letter to reach you, the longer I could live under the pretense that things weren’t truly over forever.”

He catches his hands behind his back.  His body sways back and forth once as a boyish smile forms on his lips.  “And yet, here I am.”

I dare and reach out.  My fingers catch the hem of his loose t-shirt and tug.  Physical proof.  

“Here you are.”


	3. What We Orphaned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for Oliver/Wife intimacy this chapter.
> 
> Also, the littlest reference to breathplay. Hypothetical.

They say it takes 30 days to make a habit. But by a month into the semester, my relationship with Elio feels more like an addiction and I revel in my dependency.

We find an equilibrium that keeps us firmly planted within the constraints of reality while still paying homage to the enduring past that draws us together. It is those moments, where our shared memories touches our present that are most precious to me.

We run most mornings, catch drinks after class on Friday afternoons or quick lunches between classes at the student union. There is a football game in early September where we sit, flanking my boys on either side of them in the bleachers like some modern family unit. He comes to our house for Rosh Hashana, kissing Steph on the cheek when he arrives and giving me an amused look over the glowing candles as she speaks the traditional blessings, telling me he’s only doing any of this for my sake.

And if he flirts and I flirt back, it’s harmless. And if my pulse races when I catch his eye and he just smiles, all the tension melting away from around his eyes, I tell myself it’s because we still can’t quite believe we’re getting these extra days we both had resigned ourselves to never having. He has quick become my best friend. And while the infinite yearning for _more_ never goes away, I feel happy for the first time in ages. Whole.

Even Steph noticies, choosing not to critique my increased time away from the family to be with Elio but almost encouraging it. “You know,” she says one night kneeling on our bed, “I think I like all this extra running you’re doing.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask. She’s caught me in the middle of undressing so I strike a ridiculous pose for her. She laughs in a way I haven’t heard in far too long.

“Oh, yeah.” She crawls to the end of the bed and pulls me with her.

She kisses me, slow and wanting, like we used to do before kids and the monotony of life made love making feel more like a chore than a gift we shared with each other. She lays back, legs spread wide for me. I undress her on top of the sheets, mouth trailing over skin. I find her legs shaved smooth, the hair of her groin trimmed short. She smells sweet, floral lotion and home.

She’s planned this, whether in her shower after work or while I’d finished grading in my office before coming to bed. I can’t remember the last time we made love with intention, not just some groping tumble, half asleep, lights off, 10 minutes tops. Tonight feels different. My fingers find wetness already waiting for me as I slip two fingers inside her and I like that. I like the way her body melts as I touch her, fill her. It’s empowering to know that for all the secrets I keep from her about who I am and who I want, I can still make her come.

We’ve not used protection since Jake was born - a planned c-section that made getting her tubes tied at the same time an easy choice. She lets out a high pitched moans against my ear as I enter her but instead of turning me on it makes me want to squirm. It sounds too put on, like a show. Like something one of her friends told her she should do while getting fucked by her husband. I wish she’d stop.

“I love you, Oliver.” She whispers, heated and breathless.

I say it back, a knee jerk response, and drive myself to completion with the sound of Elio panting next to me on our morning run in my ear.

*

Each year, the president of the university hosts a party for the faculty and staff during Homecoming Weekend at his mansion. It’s a gesture of thanks to the faculty with champagne in crystal flutes and pretentious tuxedos that has only ever served to reminded me that at our school the admission process is not ‘need blind’ and that that air of superiority wafts from the top down. I would never have been admitted into my own place of employment for that exact reason as an undergrad having had to make due with Harvard instead. Shame.

I’ve attended this event only a handful of times during my tenure here, but when Elio had asked if I was going I’d convinced Steph to put on a dress that required heels, trust the boys on their own for the evening, put on my newest suit (which doesn’t look half bad, if I do say so myself) and RSVP’d with a ‘yes’.

Steph is fretting about her hair when we arrive. It had taken her forever in the bathroom, something that went over with many eyerolls and plenty of snickers in our house full of boys.

“It’s fine,” I tell her.

“Fine? Don’t lay it on too thick there, Casanova,” she says with a well humored laugh. It’s been a good day for us. I bend down and kiss the top of her head, which only makes her tisk at me and fuss with her hair more. Steph immediately sees some friends, wives of colleagues that we hardly ever have the chance to see and is gone in seconds.

I map the room. Buffet table stacked high with bite-sized decadence. Jazz combo in the corner. Open bar. I head there first.

Drink in hand, I scan the the sea of dark suits and long dresses, looking for him.

I find him, not far away, chatting with a junior professor from the Drama department. Elio’s black suit is expertly, trim and flattering. He wears no tie, leaving the collar open to highlight his long neck. How many hours of my life did I spend worshiping that length of throat, both in fantasy and reality?

Something about the way he’s leaned forward - elbows placed in such a way on the high cocktail table that his shoulder blades arch, a creature about to pounce - reminds me of young Elio. Italy Elio. The enthusiastic gestures, the loose, slightly uncontrolled ligaments of his limbs. But his gaze is resolute, his lips pressed into a barely there smile. He meets his companion’s gaze and holds her attention.

That’s when it hits me: Elio is flirting.

I turn back to the bar and ask the bartender for another drink.

I am fully unprepared for this. I have always had some abstract concept of Elio with someone else in the same way one has an abstract concept of the size of the universe, cognizant of its measurable existence but not really able to understand the magnitude. Comprehension in theory but not in practice.

Elio dating. Elio sleeping around. Elio falling in love. Man or woman, it wouldn’t matter. They would both drive me insane. Which is in and of itself completely insane because my wife of 15 years is just across the room. I have no right, no reason, to any jealousy.

And yet...

Would Elio introduce this new hypothetical lover to me? Would we invite them over for dinner? Then while Steph entertained him or her in the other room, would Elio corner me to ask, with excitement in his eyes, what I thought about them? Would he seek my approval? Ask what he should do when times get rough? Would I comfort Elio when this imaginary lover breaks his heart?

Would I envy this new person? Or would I like them? Would I pull them aside and tell them that if they really want to get him going, they should drag their thumb from his adam’s apple to the base of that throat while they have their tongue in his mouth and push just enough for him to feel it but not enough to make him panic just so they’d know that, no matter what is going on between them, I’d been there first?

I drown my second drink and consider asking for a third when I feel the air shift around me. Someone is close. I pray it’s not my department head who has been watching me drown my irrational sorrows.

“What’s your poison?”

It’s Elio. I exhale then with my next inhale I smell his wearing cologne, dry and woody. I like it.

“Scotch,” I say after beat. I’d needed a moment for me to separate reality from my imagined betrayals. “I see you’ve met Helen,” I say as we wait for our drinks. Elio looks back over his shoulder and smiles faintly.

“She got in touch with me last week. Wants me to come work with her advanced students on Moliere, the nuance of the original French or something.” He waves his hand in the air as if it’s not a big deal.

“Helen is excellent at what she does. She worked for years on Broadway before coming here. West End too, I think..” I’m grasping. “You should definitely check out the winter production when it opens.”

Elio looks at me, then laughs, a short barking, monosyllabic sound of someone completely bemused. The bartender brings our drinks.

“What?” I ask. He shakes his head and takes a long drink. His lips smile around the rim of his glass. His lighthearted look is contagious and I grin, asking again, “What?”

“I know you, Oliver.” He levels me with those golden eyes. “I know what you’re doing.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Chiara?”

It been eons since I’ve even thought of that girl who had flirted so desperately with me that summer. By the time she had shown interest, I was already too distracted, trying to figure out why the professor’s son was acting like both sides of a faucet with me - hot and cold.

“What on Earth does she have to do with anything?”

“You’re trying to get me to like her.”

I hadn’t even realized it but he’s completely right. I blush fiercely knowing my accolades of Helen have revealed far too much. Elio treats me delicately, though. He doesn’t tease me. He doesn’t push me to reveal more. He just lets both of us sit with my inadvertent confession with a victorious grin on his face. Maybe I hadn’t been the only one using a bit of chicanery this evening as I look back towards Helen who is already deep in discussion with someone else. Chiara had, after all, been a pawn we’d both used, in the end.

“Just for the record, nothing ever happened with her,” I say.

“She told me as much the following summer.”

“Not for her lack of trying, of course.” We share a look “As opposed to you and Marzia.” I give the ‘z’ in her name an Italianate zing.

“Come on, now. I was a young man, trying to find myself.” He pleads his case, with a pressed grin. “You can’t fault me for that.”

“I don’t. Not one bit.”

All jollity slides from his face, replaced by a contemplative look that I can’t get past.

“She’s married now, three kids. She and her husband are co-owners of a winery outside Lyon.”

His drink finished, he makes his excuses to go visit with some other new colleague of his. But before he leaves, with our backs to the bar and shoulders aligned, standing so close to one another that any minute sway left or right would leave us touching, he turns and lets his eyes connect with mine.

“You look gorgeous tonight, by the way.”

He says it like it’s the most sincere thing he’s ever uttered in his entire life. Like it cost him something. And then he’s gone.


	4. Well I'd Know That You'd Offer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go folks! Things are about to get interesting.
> 
> Thank you SO MUCH for the support.

The fall semester follows an annual arc: its summery beginnings, the flush of foliage that creeps in leaf by leaf, week by week, the momentary reprieve of fall break followed too quickly by midterms, the goodnatured humor of Halloween after which all sights narrow on Thanksgiving break, a chance to recoup and over-eat, before the final fever pitch of finals overwhelms us and we stumble into winter break with much kvetching to fellow colleagues and gratitude we won’t have to see  _ that  _ student again next semester.

It’s a Sunday afternoon, nestled in one of those in between days where the pumpkins on people’s front porches are beginning to droop from the overnight frost but no one in their right mind would dare put out Christmas decorations yet.  Maybe an autumn themed wreath, if it is tasteful.  Maybe.  

Finding time to run with Elio has become more challenging as the days grow shorter, the weather colder and the semester busier.  When we do make plans, neither one of us wants to be the punk who backs out, even if it’s cold, even if it’s early.

So that means that Elio doesn’t dare mention the dark band of clouds moving in from the south behind his house when we meet up that morning, doesn’t bother to point out the way the wind picks up ominously as we run up the hill out of his neighborhood.  

This is why twenty minutes into our run, we’re circling back towards Elio’s house, the torrent of cold, fat raindrops soaking through our shirts, our sneakers squelching on the watery roads, rivulets of water dripping from our hair over our faces, laughing our heads off.

“Open it, open it!”  I shout as we race up his front steps.   

“I’m trying.”  His teeth are chattering, giddy and cold.

There isn’t room for both of us on the landing but I’m not about to be the one stuck under the sheet of rain spilling over the porch awning so I crowd in close behind him.  My hands find the rounded corners of his shoulders just as he finally manages all the locks and we tumble through his door.

We stand there in his entryway, panting, giggling and dripping.  Elio tosses his head forward, throwing a spray of water off his curls my way.  I shove him back, cursing around my smile.  It’s such a boyish act, we might as well be Jake and Adam.  It feels familiar, to tussle with him like this, to work out muscles so.

“I’ll get us towels.  You stay here,” he says, breathless, as I move to join him.  “No way in hell you’re ruining my new carpet.”

I am frozen to my designated spot as Elio bends down, grabbing onto my forearm for balance as he shucks his shoes and socks, then strips of not only the BU hoodie he’d been wearing but the tee-shirt he’d had underneath too.  

“Back in a sec,” he says as if having stripped half naked and barefoot in front of me is no big deal.  

I watch the way the filled out muscles of his back and shoulders move under his porcelain skin as he walks away.  The way his black athletic pants have slid low on his hips reveal curve of his low back.  My body reacts, even as I stand here dripping cold.

Elio returns, throwing me an over-sized towel as he rubs the rain out of his hair with a towel of his own.  

“I can put your clothes in the drier if you want,” he says but I’m too distracted.  There, hanging from a thin gold chain, resting on his hairless chest, is the six-pointed-star symbol of our mutual heritage.  I can’t tell if it’s the same one he’d started wearing our summer together but it might as well be.

I remember the day: the Piave, his speech, the icy water of the spring, the kiss, the nose bleed, the two of us crammed into the hallway as I cracked his toes, his fingers toying with my necklace and neck.  He’d already been wearing his own the next time I’d seen him, the day we’d made love for the first time.

He looks down, following my shameless stare.  “Not such a Jew of discretion anymore, huh?”  He says.  “I’ve gotten used to it over the years.  After you left I couldn’t bare to take it off.  It reminded me of you too much.”

My rapt absorption stretches.  His long fingers come to rest on the fabric of my own shirt, where my own Star of David has long since been missing.

“Do you…?”

“No,” I utter.  “I took mine off the day I got home for the exact same reason.”

How is this possible?    

6 weeks.  That’s all we’d had.  Less than half as long as Elio has been living here already.  Only two weeks where we’d actually owned up to ourselves and been together.  It was a blip, a length of days that is nothing when compared to a life, to a marriage.  Yet we've both remained pathetically faithful, turing those set of days into an epoch in our minds.  Holding on.  Letting it morph in the years that have passed into something sacrosanct and pure.  

We hold up so beautifully to history.  

He’s looking at me, mouth parted, breath unnaturally slow like he’s desperate to control it.  His hand on my chest flattens while he brings his other hand to the parallel place on his own body, covering the Star as if he’s suddenly become self conscious of it.  Of his undress, his proximity.  His long fingers play at the base of his neck, his face flushes but he does not avert his gaze.

I know this look.  I’ve remembered it.  Imagined it.  Dreamt it.  Re-lived it.  It is an open, riveting, unafraid stare that does not beg instead it insists,  _ Your move.  _

I kiss him only long enough to register that I’m doing it.  To hear his exhale through his nose, halting and weak.  For me to to angle my head and feel his tongue’s gentle caress against mine.  

“I’m sorry.”  I whisper, stepping away.  Am I apologizing for kissing him or apologizing for stopping?  God, his mouth on mine again had felt like heaven.

Elio’s eyes linger closed a beat longer, then he brings his fingers to his lips and notes my apology with a nod.  

“It’s ok.”  

“It’s really not though.  That shouldn’t have happened…”  After the rush comes the remorse.  The panic.  I run my fingers through my hair, having forgotten it was wet.  “ _ Shit _ .  I’ve never...but there was a moment, right? And...”

“And I was right there with you.  It was a good moment.”  His hands on my shoulders are nothing more than comfort and I take it, gladly.  “Look, we both know we’ve been dancing a dangerous line since I got here.”  He looks at me.  “Tell me if I’m crazy…”

“You’re not crazy.”

That answer brings him some relief.

“So… maybe this, or something more, needed to happen between us so we could come full circle, close the door on what happened.  Because, otherwise, I’m not sure I know how to do this.”

This gets my full attention.  “Do what?”

He gestures between us.  “This.  Us.  Are we just running buddies who used to fuck?  Colleagues who were in love with each other one summer 16 years ago?  Soulmates forever stuck between always and never?”

I still love the way he says things, so influenced by the poetry he’s spent his whole life studying, even as his words break me apart.   _ Yes,  _ I want to say - we’re all those things and so much more.

“Or are we really  _ just friends _ ?”  Elio says and then rolls his eyes, scoffing at his own words.  Just friends.  He hates the cliche as much as I do.  The remorse I feel now attacks a very different more ancient, part of my heart.

“If I could, you know I’d…”

“I know.”

“But it’s all we can be, Elio.”  

“I know,” he repeats.  The first had been resigned, his voice rough.  The second, he’d given the words an upward, motivational lilt as if to say _This will actually be totally fine. Right?_ But then his face crumples into a tight lipped grimace.   “Truth is, I’m not sure I know how to do ‘just friends’ either.”

“Me neither,” I admit.

We stand there in wretched silence.   

“I should go,” I say when I can’t take it anymore.

“Don’t be an idiot.  It’s still pissing down out there and you’d only ruin your car.”  The words weigh heavy on his back.  “Let’s get your clothes in the drier, amico.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and next will be on the shortish side. I'll probably lump the last 3 "chapters" into one mega post as that will be the bulk of the drama/resolution, so that may take a bit longer to get to you than usual. :)


	5. The Deepest Nest, in Keeper's Keep

We go to my parents house in Connecticut for Thanksgiving, which is stressful enough without the specter of my barely-there yet colossus of a kiss with Elio towering over my thoughts.  

My mother and Steph spend all day in the kitchen.  Jake and Adam are useless lumps on the couch, watching football.  When my father asks for their help stacking firewood outside in preparation for the winter, I offer instead, saying they both deserve a day to be lazy.  This leaves the boys beaming at me and my father judgemental.

He moves slower that he used to, his back and knees both giving him grief, so I end up doing most of the work.  It is a familiar chore from my childhood, and I find something satisfying in it.  The the clack of the logs landing on the growing pile, the rough bark just a slip away from a splinter, the bend and twist and toss of the movement.  

There is a message on our house voicemail from Elio when we get home a few days later, which is and of itself an oddity.   _ Just friends, _ I remind myself.  He addresses both Stephanie and I in the message, an invitation to his house for a belated housewarming party.  “I know it’s weird that it’s a weeknight,” his voice says from the small speaker, “But with my travels plans for break...well, I hope you can both make it.”

Steph is tickled pink but I am cautious.  I had thought the holiday, putting both distance and time between us might have helped reorient my emotions towards friendship and away from this nebulous longing, but I should know from past experience that neither of those things can help where Elio and my heart are involved. 

The day of the party, Jake comes home early from school sick and Adam succumbs to the same illness a few hours later.  Steph goes into full nurse-mom mode, emptying buckets and providing wet washcloths along with comforting words even while disinfecting everything.  She still manages a heavy sigh and brusque, “Just go, if you’re going,” when she sees me dressed and ready for the evening out.

“Where’s Steph?”  Elio asks when I arrive.  Warm, delicious-smelling air wafts from his doorway, the sound of already gathered friends.  His cheeks are rosy, from working over a hot stove and probably a few glasses of wine along the way.

“The boys got sick,” I explain, gesturing awkwardly with the bottle of wine I’ve brought.  “She’s not happy I’m here.”

“Well, I am.”  The flirty quip is so natural, he only notices it after I blush.  He mutters an apology and I shake it away with a smile.

The meal itself is delicious, old recipes from home, some of which I recognize as Mafalda’s.  The company is a wonderful mix of colleagues and spouses from various departments.  Elio has managed to invite only those who are most down to Earth with no need to show off just.  There is no dinner drudgery here.

People begin to make their excuses to leave soon after the meal is finished.  Many need to get home to sitters or still have a final to give in the morning, but I linger making myself useful in the kitchen.

“Should you get home?”  Elio asks as he hands me yet another set of plates.

“It’s probably best if I just keep out of the way, honestly.  Want me to open another bottle?”

Elio stifles a radiant smile and nods.

Eventually, it is just the two of us.  It’s a mild night for early December in New England, so with mutterings about climate change, we find ourselves under heavy throw blankets, sitting on Elio’s second floor terrace, feet resting on the low ottoman along with our wine glasses, staring at the stars.

He pulls something out from his coat pocket, a small, tightly twisted plastic bag, a package of cigarette papers and a lighter.

“Is that...?”  

“Mmmhmm,” he hums as he smoothes a paper on his knee and begins to roll a joint.

“I am shocked, Professor Perlman.  Shocked, I tell you.” I say with affected indignation.  He laughs, twisting the paper tight and giving me a flash of tongue to seal it.  

“Shut up and give me a light.”    

“You’re a bad influence on me, you know. I haven't smoked this shit in ages,” I mutter as I click on the lighter and bring the flame close to Elio’s face.  He inhales and the smell takes me right back to my dorm room at Harvard, the balcony in B.

“Don’t see you putting up too much of a fight.”  I try not to put a double meaning to his words as I take the offered joint gently between my fingers.  

We settle back, side by side on the wicker sofa, passing the joint between us.  He hadn’t packed it tight enough so it burns quickly.  The second one, that I roll, is better.  I like the way the paper becomes wet from both our mouths, the skittering feel that develops beneath my skin.   

“So, I have to ask,”  Elio says as he leans into my side, stealing and sharing my heat as the drugs take hold.    

“Are you happy?”  His words are the dangerous, opening salvo of someone too stoned to hold back.

“I’m happy right now.”  

Elio’s eyes, though heavy, are remarkably resolute.  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

“You mean with Steph.”

“I mean with Steph.”

I pull another long drag into my lungs.  “Would we be having this conversation is she were here?”

Elio just snorts and settles deeper into the sofa, tucking his chin into the collar of his coat.  It feels right to drop my arm around his shoulders, so I do, letting my cheek fall into his curls.

“No one tells you how hard marriage is going to be.  You don’t say ‘I do’ then live happily ever after, it’s work.  Some days is really fucking hard work. And some days it’s fine and other days you fight and some days you can’t even stand the way they chew their food.”  Elio laughs softly through his nose.  “I don’t think that’s a situation unique to me and Steph but I’m sure the fact our the union wasn’t based on an all consuming love to begin with doesn’t help.”

“So you weren’t in love with her?”

“I didn’t say that.  She was my best friend.”  The verb tense, chosen by my high subconscious, unnerves me.

“Then why stay with her?  After all this time?”

“Because I made promises.  Took vows.  We have kids, a mortgage.  This is what a life is supposed to look like, right?   _ My  _ life.”

I only realize how sad and defeatist it sounds once I’ve said it.  I can’t bare to look at Elio incase all I see there is pity.  I put out the remainder of the joint in my now empty wine glass, neither of us needing anymore.

“Tell me about your parallel life, Oliver.”  His voice is crystalline, delicate as moonlight on frost.  

“I can’t.”   

“No, just tell me.”  He looks so incredibly young as he turns his face towards mine. “In your parallel life, am I there?”

It is the most personal thing anyone has ever asked of me.

“Yes, in every single one.”

I can remember only one other time in my life that I have felt closer to another human soul and if there is any justice in the world, Elio too is remembering our last night in Rome when we had been too grieved over my impending departure to make love with the knowledge that it would be the last time.  So instead we had lain side by side, held the each other’s gaze, seen ourselves embedded in the others’ soul and cried openly in each other’s arms.

Emboldened by our intimacy, I roll my body towards him.  

“Sometimes, I imagine we’d meet at some conference when we were both junior professors, away from our families for the weekend.  We’d decide to blow off all the talks and stuffy cocktail parties and stay in your room or mine all night long.”

Elio laces his fingers with mine then presses our joined hands against his chest.

“Or if I were just a bit younger or you were just a bit older, you might have walked into class on the first day of your freshman year, some massive lecture where I was your TA.  Our eyes would have meet, and it could have started then.  Just dating, like normal people.”

Elio juts his chin forward, reflexive, trying to hold back the tears I can already see on his lashes.

“Or god, we could have just met at a gay club in New York, dancing to the Psychedelic Furs.”

He squeezes my hand all the tighter, then speaks.  

“Or maybe, if I had just fought for you that night you told me you were getting married.  Thrown a giant strop like the spoiled child I was and demanded that you were mine and I was yours, alone.  Made you wait for me.”

He shifts the tense from my imagined fantasy, to real palpable, regret.  It’s my left hand that he has in his ironclad grasp and his thumb has started to toy with the band of gold on my finger, spinning it slowly.  I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it.

“I would have waited.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Elio’s laugh is more like a broken sob.

“Would we have been happy, though?”  I ask, and by doing so ask, Could we be happy now?

“Don’t ask me that, Oliver,” He begs.   I bring my free hand to his face, wiping away the tears that have crested over his delicate cheekbones.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think either of us can bare the answer.”

Our voices have dropped to nothing, to those scant whispers saved for the most intimate moments between lovers.  And that’s when I realize that what we have become since he first appeared out of a 15 year absence and what we have always been since that first night at midnight, are lovers.  Ours has been an affair of emotion, joined by a bond, timeless and unflinching, forged in the fires of heartbreak that become something altogether new and stronger for it.  

So when I kiss him, I kiss him like lovers do.  Like one who is unafraid to love wholly.  Like one that believes in soul mates and in happily ever after.  In this moment, I break every promise I’ve ever made to Steph, to my family and myself and hand myself to him with complete trust and tender abandon.   

*

The next morning, Elio knocks on my office door.  

“Come in,” I say standing up from my desk as I expect it to be a student come to complain about their grade or missed exam and am glad when it’s him.  

He saunters in with a sheepish, hands-in-pockets look on his face.  He spins on his heel, closing the door behind him firmly.

Our night had eventually gotten too cold for us to stay outside any longer.

“Should we go in?” Elio had asked, his way of asking if I’d wanted to spend the night.  My stomach had swooped as I’d almost said yes.

“I should get home.  The kids...”

“Yeah, of course,” Elio had said.  His lips had been flushed such a beautiful shade of pink from our kissing and I’d let my thumb trail across them one last time.  He’d risked a smile.

It had been nearly 3am and he’d had his arms wrapped tightly around himself as he’d watched me collect my things to go.  

“I hate to be that asshole but what now?”

“I know what I feel for you, Elio.  But what I do with that?  I honestly don’t know.”

He’d nodded tersely, biting the inside of his lips.

I’d sat in my driveway for nearly forty-five minutes, dreading going inside.  What would it feel like to go through that door?  Step back into that life, knowing what I now know to be true about myself which is that I should have never started that life at all?  Could I crawl into bed next to Steph after having had my lips on Elio mouth, my hands in his hair, his breathless whispers ringing in my ears?  Would I be able to look at my boys the next morning and their sick-pale faces when I knew their father is the sickest of them all?

I’d ended up in my office, eventually dozing on the couch.  When Steph had found me there this morning, she’d said it was probably smarter I slept in here anyway in case she’d picked up what the boys had then asked pleasantly about Elio’s party.  She’d run her fingers through my hair, catching the scent marijuana smoke still stuck to the matted strands.  

“Oh it was that kind of party, was it?” she’d said with a twinkling smile.  I could hardly stand it.  It was too much empathy from the woman I’d betrayed, too much latitude from the wife I now imagined leaving, too much chipper morning attitude from the mother who had been up nearly as late as I had, taking care of our two sick sons.  

I didn’t know self-loathing could take such a leaden, physical form until a rock of guilt had sunk through my gut.

We’d crossed that line we’d been balancing on, Elio and I, not with any physical act but with our hearts.  There was no way out but through, now.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Elio says.  “Not really.” He adjusts his shoulders, rolling them back like the fabric of his blazer is not falling comfortably.

“Same.”  I tap on my fingers on the edge of my desk.  “When’s your flight?”

“Tomorrow.  That’s actually why I’m here.”

From behind his back, he throws a tri-folded piece of paper across my desk.  The toss is forceful, like he’s mad at himself for doing it.  I open the paper, reading it as he speaks.

“I’m never going to ask you to choose, Oliver.  Because if I were in your shoes…I don’t know how you make this decision.”

It’s a ticket, in my name to Milan, via Boston and then Rome, first class, dated for tomorrow.

“But choose me.”

Elio is equal part defiance and frailty.  Brimming with poise of a man, certain of his feelings who has finally decided to act but with the breakable edge of a boy pleading for those feelings to be returned.  I come around my desk aching to touch him but he backs away, as if knowing my proximity would rob him of his ability to get out what he needs to say.

“Because don’t we deserve this, Oliver?  Not those boys on the Piave that we hope we’d envy, but  _ us _ .  The two men we are, here and now.  The running buddies, the colleagues, the friends who actually have the chance at a life together that those boys could never have even dreamed of.  And not just any life, Oliver, a happy one.”

He is tenacious, speaking clearly round his unsteady breaths and cracking voice.  I find myself feeling proud of him, in addition to emotionally wrecked.

“Come with me to B,” he continues. “We’ll sleep in our old bed.  We’ll walk to the Berm in the snow.  Mafalda will make us Latkes and when we leave there we’ll come back here  _ together _ .”

He speaks those final words in a rush as I slide both hands around him, capturing his trembling body just as he falls into my arms.  How I so fiercely wish I could give what he is asking of me as easily as he gives it.  I want nothing more in the world then to return to Italy with him.  To take him to bed.  Undress and remap him.  Wake beside every day as we grow old.  Live a life.

But I have a life. Even if right now it feels more like a steel cage.

“Elio...”  

“I know,” he says, clinging desperately to my back.  “You can’t.”

I’ve said those words to him before, causing much reciprocated pain and I won’t say them again.  I step back, holding him gently at arm's length.  “I shouldn't.”

“Shouldn’t?”  

I only realize how much hope that single word can hold as it registers on Elio’s face, like the merest space between a pair of curtains, that if the sun hits at just the right angle would still fill an entire room up with glowing light.

Would it be fair to even give him that much hope?

“Can’t.”  

Elio pulls away from me completely.  It feels final and perhaps it should.  But then, before I can even rationalize how much I deserve this pain, his lips are on me, claiming me with a level of passion that we’d only ever reached in the deepest parts of ours nights together.  Not rough but ravenous.  A kiss to remember us by.

“Don’t ever forget how this felt,” he rasps, his fingertips pressing the base of my skull, lips ghosting mine, teasing more. “How much we wanted this.”

And then, in case it is the last chance I will ever have in this lifetime, I sigh, “ _ Oliver _ .”

His body is instantly taunt, a rod of inconsolable fury.  “Don’t,” he chokes.  “Don’t you  _ fucking  _ dare.”

He slams the door on his way out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. I promise. It's all going to work out.
> 
> And yes, I was super inspired by the revelation that the boys were stoned their first night together. And the fact that Armie is a giant pot head just makes me love him more.


	6. This is Axiom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Oscar Day. The end. :)

 

_Said your love is known_  
_I'm standing up on it_

_Aren't we married?_  
_I ain't living in the dark no more_  
_It's not a promise, I'm just gonna call it_

Beth/Rest, Bon Iver

 

I want to drink until I can’t think anymore.  I want to sit in my office and cry until I’m purged.  I want to punch something leaving my knuckles bloody.  I want to go for a run and never come back. I want to scream.  I want to call Mr. Perlman so he can give me all the answers. I want to be with Steph when we were first married and it didn’t feel like I was pretending.  I want to be 24 again and take the internship in Athens I’d been offered instead.  I want to hold my boys like I used to when they were little and tell them how sorry I am for being such a complete fuck up.  

More than anything, I want to go to Elio and fix us.

Instead, I go home.  Where else is there for me?  

I fake my way through dinner, feeling ill and weak, on the verge of tears.  Jake doesn’t take much notice when I offer to tuck him in for the night, holding him a bit too tight.  But Adam gives me a knowing look as I stand in the doorway to his room watching him read for a few minutes longer than usual, his bedside light a warm glow over his maturing face.  Someday, I’ll have those adult conversations with him, find a way to explain, but for tonight, I just need to imagine the boy in him.

Steph is waiting for me in the bedroom, sitting in the middle of the bed, feet tucked under her knees.  I walk straight past her into the bathroom, hoping that is enough of a sign that I am in no mood.

But she’s still sitting the same way when I come out several minutes later, showered and teeth brushed.

“We don’t talk anymore,” she says.  She plays nervously with the frayed hem of her pajama bottoms.  I can tell even that statement took a lot of nerve.  

I stand by my side of the bed, rubbing at my haggard face with both hands. “Can we not do this tonight, please?”    

“No, Oliver.  Something is clearly wrong.”

“Who said anything’s wrong?”

She looks me over pointedly with an exasperated huff as if she can see my despair on me as clearly as a garish suit.  

“When was the last time we talked about anything that really mattered?”

I press my eyes closed.  I wish she would stop encouraging me down this road because I know if I start talking, I won’t stop until it’s all out in the open.  I am raw enough and ready to crack and this can’t be how life altering, marriage ending conversations are supposed to happen, can it? With your kids in bed down the hall, wearing your wool socks with a hole in the heel and the taste of toothpaste still in your mouth.

“Tell me what is wrong.”  It’s the whine in her voice that does it.

“Fine!” I snap.  “You want to talk?”   She gestures broadly at the empty foot of the bed. I sit. “Then let’s talk about my summer in Italy.”

“Why?”  It’s the brash question of someone who thinks they already know the whole story.

“You know I was with someone that summer.”

She rolls her eyes.  “Obviously.”

“Well, what I’ve never told you was that it wasn’t just some summer fling.  We were in love with each other.  But it was more than love it was...You know when you’re a little kid and you first meet someone who has the same name as you, or shares your birthday or is wearing the same shirt as you?  And it dawns on you that someone in this gigantic world can be so much like you and yet not you?  I have never felt more attuned to any other human being, ever in my life. It was cosmic.  Once in a lifetime kind of thing.”

It’s cruel and I know it.  She bares it bravely, though, with only a slight tremor to her chin.

“We kissed for the last time in a bathroom at the Rome train station then less than a day later, I was in New York.  You and I got back together again a few weeks after I got back and we were engaged a few months after that.  And that whole time I was mourning the loss of the most important relationship in my life.” She stares at me, seemingly unmoved.  

“What is the point?  That was 16 years ago, Oliver.”  

I smile grimly.  16 years.  Or just this morning.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that I never told you about this before?  This was the person I was with just before you and I’ve never told you about how much they meant to me or told you their name or showed you a picture of us together.  I mean, I know all about your ex- boyfriends.  Christ, a few of them where even at our wedding.  Why did you never even think to ask who this person could be?”

She mutters something and I snap back,  “What did you say?”

“Because I didn’t need to!”  She repeats louder.  She cocks her head and a smile forms on her face, sinister like a cartoon villain.  Her words are a slow revelation.  “You thought I didn’t know about you?  That I’ve always known?  Oh, Oliver.”

It’s like a bullet made of ice straight through my chest.  

_She knows?_

“My mom warned me, when we first got together.  A brilliant, gorgeous guy like you with a girl like me?”  She laughs, breathless, coquettish, self-effacing.  “She swore you’d only end up hurting me.  But I had a secret.  I knew about you and your men…”  It’s so bitter I almost wretch.  “I saw the way you looked at other guys in your class, walking down the street in the Village or out at parties.  And it wasn’t how you looked at me, or any other girl, for that matter.  Why do you think I split up with you so many times, Oliver?  I gave you so many chances...”

I feel like the history of my life is being rewritten.

“But you swore you loved me.  And you were different and I liked that.  You were open and bookish and kind and I felt safe with you.  You were my best friend so of course I wanted to marry you.  And I didn’t think it mattered that you didn’t really want me the same way I wanted you.  I thought I would be happy as long as I had you.  And for a long time, I was.  I _really_ was.”

Silent tears fall down her face by the end and I do what I’ve always done when my wife cries, I take her hand in mine.  Her breath catches, unprepared for my offer of comfort, then both her hands clench around mine.  

We are silent for a long time, aside from her intermittent sniffling.  I try to think of the times she might have suspected me.  Had I really been so transparent?  Has she suffered with her secret just much as I’d suffered with mine?

The muscles of my forearms grow weary from squeezing her hand so tightly, but I don’t let go.  I’m reminded of the way I’d held her hand through Adam’s several hour-long delivery, sweating and screaming through the pain to accomplish her miraculous feat.  She had been so beautiful to me then.

And there is beauty here, too, within our brutal honesty even as we both sense it will be our ending.  We are completely freed from hiding anything anymore.

Which is why it feels like I’m doing justice to them both when I break our silence and say, “It was Elio.”  

She blinks at me.

“I was _with_ Elio.”

“Oh.” Her hands go limp in mine and slip away.  “ _God_.”   

She’s trembling and pale as she climbs off the bed, feeling the full brunt of my betrayal.  It’s too much like the way Elio had pulled away from me this morning.

“It wasn’t supposed to become this big, massive thing but I knew from the first night we spent together that Elio owned me in a way I’ve never had before or since with anyone.  And I tried, I really tried, when I came home to just cram all of that emotion, all that beauty, into some dark corner of my heart like it never even happened.  And for years it lived there, hiding.  But then he showed up last fall and that part of me that was always his woke up again.”

I watch as she works the full horror of it all out in her head, the puzzle pieces slotting into place, all the oddities that hadn’t quite added up now making total sense.

“You're sleeping with him.”

“No.”  I state emphatically, but she’s not listening.

“We didn’t use a condom that last time.  Do I need to go get tested?”

I bow my head in complete defeat.  Our moment of quiet communion is gone in a flash, erased from memory by her harpyish reaction.  And I think: this is exactly why we can never be fixed.

“I haven’t slept with him, Steph, give me some credit.”  She gives me an ugly scoff instead.  “We’ve kissed a few times but that’s it, I swear.  And besides I know he’s fine,” I add, feeling the need to defend his status and her horrible homophobic stereotyping.

“How do you know?”

“Because he would have told me.”

For some reason that statement affects her as much as any other.  Perhaps it had been the certainty with which I’d said it.  Or perhaps it’s because it reveals just how much I trust him, how openly he and I must speak if I would know something so intimate.  

“Is that why he moved here, to try to win you back?”

“That was just random luck of the universe.  He was very adamant that he not interfere with my life.”

“Well, his resolve didn't last very long, did it?”

How could it?  When it had been me who had gone searching for him in his office, who suggested we start running together, who kissed him the first time.  I'd even been the one to give him the final seal of approval to take the job in the first place. I’ve been leading him on all this time, even as I’ve pushed him away, claiming wife, children, expectations.  

I’m suddenly struck by the very real fear that I could come out of this having lost them both.

Steph stands there, looking completely unmoored.  She goes into the bathroom and the shower runs for a long time.  

There is still so much more I want to explain (I wouldn’t have risked this for anyone other than him).  For me to try to understand (If you’ve known about me all this time, and if you really claimed to have been my best friend, why make me suffer the lie?).  To make amends (I’m sorry. I’m so sorry).  And figure out the practicalities of how you take apart a life.  (What do we tell the boys?)

But when Steph comes out of the bathroom, her wet hair combed slick over her back, she heads towards the door.  

“Steph, is that it?”  

“I think we’re both said enough for tonight, don't you?”

*

It’s nearly seven in the morning and outside the window over our kitchen sink I can finally see the beginnings of morning light at the edges of the sky.  It looks like snow, as the locals say.  Flat ashy-white clouds and a feeling in the bones.  It will be fluffy snow, too cold for anything wet.  Nothing our snow tires won't be able to handle.  Nothing that will affect Elio’s noontime departure. I’ve already checked.

Next to me, my second pot of coffee finishes brewing with a watery hiss.  I’ve not really slept in two days and I need it.

When I hear Stephanie shuffle into the room behind me, I reach to the cabinet for her favorite mug, pour more milk into the waiting coffee than should be legal and add just a dash of sugar.  It’s the way she’s always liked it and she wipes away a tear as I join her at the table.

Even the air around us seems to ache, weeping with last times.

It’s Saturday so the boys won’t be up for a while yet.  We know we have this stretch of privacy to survey the wreckage.  Neither of us have said the words, but we both know:  our marriage is over.

For as pitiful as we are, I’ve found stability in the new growing day.   There can be no more hiding.  No more settling.  I hope, through the perspective of time, we will both look back on this quiet morning in our kitchen with the most horrible decision of our lives finally made, and see it as a moment of liberation.

“He asked me to go to with him to Italy,”  I say.

“Wow,” she tries to sound impressed, but it’s more snide than anything else.  I don’t blame her.  “When?”

“Today.”

“What time?”

“It doesn’t matter.  I told him I couldn’t go.”

“Why not? You clearly want to.”

“Because...”  I gesture meekly, indicating our whole house.  Our whole life.  Does she realize what I may have sacrificed to try to salvage what she and I just terminated?

The tightness at the back of my throat becomes too much and in that very typically American-male way, I begin to cry, like the physical act itself hurts me more than the emotions that are causing them.  I can vouch that this is very much not the case.

I drop my face to tented fingers so Steph doesn't have to watch.  She must know these tears are not for her.

“Look,” she says after an extended beat.  “We’re both too young to be this miserable for the rest of our lives. No, not miserable,” she quickly amends when I look up, pained.  “...just so incomplete.  We’ve been trying to keep this together for years, even before Elio arrived.  I’m not happy and neither are you.”

She looks to me for confirmation and I look back grimly.

It’s the first time in this whole selfish process that I wonder if Steph has ever turned away from someone she had been drawn to, met someone who made her heart flutter but said ‘no’ for the sake of our family.  How many parallel lives is she living?

“Can you wait to go until we have the chance to tell the boys?  I’d rather do it once they’re done with school next week.  Then I can take them to my parents house for break.  They always like being there for Hanukkah, maybe it will distract them a little.  And it will give you time to start getting your things out.”

I grab her hand.  This is the closest thing to a blessing she will ever give me.

She dumps her coffee cup in the sink.  I’ll rinse it out later.  She trails her hands across my shoulder blades as she walks past, a mistaken touch out of habit or a first attempt at making amends, I’m not sure which.

“It hasn’t been all bad, has it?”  I ask before she’s totally gone.

“No,” she says, a sweet smile on her face that looks like practice for whomever comes next. “Not at all."

*

The local airport is a small, regional thing, only a few dozen flights a day, connecting to bigger airports or to all points Floridian, easy access for snowbirds. Today the terminal is full of college students headed home for winter break which is why it’s so easy to find him.  His elegant posture, curls freshly washed and styled, dressed in a suit for first-class, long haul travel, is a striking contrast to the hoodied throngs.

He’s about to get into line for the security check so I call his name when I’m close enough.

Elation flashes across his face as he turns towards my voice, only to have that look replaced by fortified rebuke when he sees I am without bags, clearly not dressed for travel.  I hadn’t even had time to shower yet so I look about as put together as one of the student travelers instead of their professor.

“I can’t come with you today.”

“Remarkably, I worked that out all on my own.”  He turns away from me, dress coat hanging over his arms.  I grab him briefly by the elbow and indicate with a tilt of my head for him to follow me.

“I don’t have much time,” he says like a warning.

“I don’t need much time.”  I smile back.

There is a family bathroom close by.  He goes in first and I lock the door behind us.

“What is this?” He gripes.  “Another furtive goodbye in a bathroom stall?  God, we really do keep living our life in circles.”

I kiss him to shut him up.  

He’s still holding onto his coat and his carry-on but he leans into the kiss with his whole body.  He still thinks this is an ending.  But I know this is just the first kiss of many, so my lips curl into a smile even as they continue their long press against Elio’s mouth.  I spread my hands on either side of his jaw, holding him close after the kiss breaks.  His eyes stay closed, the space between his brows creased with the saddest little wrinkle.  I kiss it.

“Why are you doing this to me, Oliver?  Why are you here?”  

“Because I told you I couldn’t come with you _today_.”  Elio opens his eyes; they look like he’s been dreaming.

“I changed my tickets.  I’ll be there on Christmas eve.”

“Does that mean...”

“I told her everything.”

It feels like I’ve just delivered the best news in the history of the world.  The test came back negative.  The governor has called in a pardon.  It’s relief. It’s elation.

“I told her about me, about us.”  I redouble my caress of his face and move in even closer.  “I told her that I’ve been in love with you for so long, I wouldn’t even recognize myself anymore without the part of me that is you.”

Elio gives himself up to my touch, falling heavy against me.  He reaches up, pulls at a thatch of hair near the front of my head, something he did so many times when we were together.  I tip my head back, leaving room for him to tuck his head against my neck, just so he can breathe me for a few moments.

To give and take comfort in him again, it’s better than I could have ever dreamed in any of those imagined lives.

“How are you?”  He asks eventually, once we both feel secure enough in our reunion.  I so appreciate the way he forms the question.

“Not great.  Pretty fucking awful, actually.  I feel like a complete failure.” Elio is all empathy.  “I have no idea how we’ll tell the boys.  Adam might never forgive me and my own parents, well....” I run my fingers roughly through my hair.  “Steph and I have so much to sort out.  That’s why I can’t just jump on the plane with you today."

“It’s ok, Oliver.”

“I won’t even have a place to live.”

Without a second’s hesitation, Elio reaches into the pocket of his coat.  “This one is for the dead bolt, this one the main lock,” he points out various keys on his chain. “The small gold one is for the storage closet, if you need it.  Same number as my unit.”

I realize what’s he’s offering and Elio shrugs the magnitude of it away.

“I think I know a thing or two about making space for you in my bedroom.”

I kiss him again to keep myself from sobbing.  

“Things are going to be really terrible for a long time.”  

“And I’ll be here.” He says, simply.

“You will be, won’t you?”

16 years ago I’d gotten on a train, and left Elio with nothing more than a heavily revised manuscript, a heart full of memories I assumed I’d need to rely on for the rest of my life and the postcard that hangs in my office at school with those two words written on the back.   _Cor cordium._  An absolute truth, something that philosophers argue doesn’t exist but in this case I know it does.

I’d hoped one day for Adam or Jake to bring it back to B. for me.  I would tuck the frame into their suitcase just before they left and explain, “On the top most floor, the bedroom on the left, there will be blank spot on the wall, a place where time has not touched, hang it there.”  My sons, the most precious gifts I’ve ever had the honor of receiving, acting as courier for my heart.  

I’d wanted that symbolic return to coincide with the final chapter of my life where not even my children really needed me any more.  I wanted one last homage to Elio.  To us. One ultimate ending.

But as I leave the airport, plane ticket in one hand and keys to his house in the other, I know that in two weeks time, I’ll be the one to fly to B..  I’ll pack the post card in my own luggage, climb the stairs to the room where I’ll sleep with Elio later that night.  I’ll find the spot on the wall as he holds me from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder.  We’ll hang the postcard back where it belongs, together, a demarcation of our new beginning.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, a million thank yous for every comment, every kudo. You have NO idea how much joy it brings me to see people enjoying what I come up with in this crazy, obsessed brain of mine. A few notes:
> 
> 1) I've borrowed from both the book and the movie, so this is a gross non-canonical mess. Whatever. It takes place in 1999.  
> 2) My biggest regret in this series is that I never got include Oliver's cat, who adores him, but hates everyone else. Except Elio, of course.  
> 3) It was so important to me that Steph be a character, even if we didn't like, at least sympathized with. Oliver is a good man. He would not take this decision lightly, because deep down I do think he loves Steph even though they are broken and he obviously loves his family, and for as much as he loves Elio it wouldn't be easy for him.  
> 4) I do have a few "extras" kicking around in my brain. (Oliver/Elio in Italy for New Years Eve, a talk between Oliver and Adam, Steph's first date after) I need a break after this, but will get to those for sure.  
> 5) This was SO Oliver's story. I kind of know how Aciman feels when he says he doesn't know Oliver. I really have only vague ideas of what must have been going on in Elio's head through all this. Perhaps one day, I'll flip it.  
> 6) As I've mentioned before, I basically listened non-stop the self titled Bon Iver album while writing this. Pefect album.  
> 7) Definitely stole a Timmy/Armie-ism in this section. :)  
> Thanks again for reading. I'm over on Tumblr under the same name. See you there? xo


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